Edinburgh Art Festival

A pilot version of Edinburgh’s long-awaited and much discussed festival of the visual arts is being launched this summer, following 12 months of co-ordinated work by some of Scotland’s leading arts figures. The first ever Edinburgh Art Festival will run concurrently with the other Edinburgh Festivals and will present an ambitious programme of exhibitions hosted by the capital’s internationally renowned galleries and art venues. Building on the city’s cosmopolitan credentials and reputation for staging the world’s foremost cultural events, the Art Festival aims to raise the profile of the visual arts significantly and invigorate interest in the high quality work being shown in 26 leading galleries and artist led-organisations.

In its first year, the festival will pull together a wide-ranging selection of exhibitions including works by important Renaissance masters and leading contemporary work by Scottish and International contemporary artists, with exhibitions ranging from painting through printmaking, photography, sculpture and site-specific installations to performance based work. Of special significance is the opening of the Playfair Project, the National Galleries of Scotland’s multi-million pound scheme, which creates an underground link between the National Gallery and the recently refurbished galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy building.

Among the exhibitions selected, drawn from the international stage, are the only UK showings of Abstract Expressionist and Pop Artist Jasper Johns’ recent work at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and the meticulously-crafted ‘hybrid pictures’ created from a dazzling array of three dimensional materials by New York-based artist Fred Tomaselli at The Fruitmarket Gallery. In photography, highlights will include 150 iconic portraits by Cecil Beaton at the City Art Centre and winning images from the Jerwood Photography Awards 2003 at Stills Gallery, in association with Portfolio Magazine. The Ingleby Gallery will be presenting new works by Scottish artist Alison Watt, including her site-specific painting hung in an intimate side chapel in Old St Paul’s Church, Jeffrey Street.

Celebrating one of the most established women artists living and working in Scotland, the Scottish Gallery will show new works by Dame Elizabeth Blackadder and at the Edinburgh Printmakers a ‘diamond dust’ folio that includes work by Gavin Turk, Simon Periton, Peter Saville, Peter Liversidge, Linder and Peter Blake will be on show and on sale.

Annuale, an Edinburgh-based collective of galleries comprising of Aurora, The Embassy, Magnifitat, Totalkunst and Wuthering Heights, will be exhibiting in five new and surprising locations across the city. Along with the Collective Gallery’s four offsite commissions of work by Mike Nelson, Jenny Hogarth, Dan Perjovschi and Johan Grimonprez, this offers an imaginative approach to the presentation of work using the architectural fabric and infrastructure of the city of Edinburgh. With major exhibitions such as The Age of Titian at the Royal Scottish Academy Building and Treasures of Tuscany at the Royal Museum of Scotland, the combined strength of all the myriad exhibitions will not only increase awareness and enjoyment of the city’s vibrant art scene, but also draw new audiences to participating galleries.

Curators, artists and public have been unified in their support of a festival dedicated to the visual arts to complement the abundance of festival-based cultural events in Edinburgh in August. Following fresh calls to initiate a summer arts programme, and champion the most ambitious and imaginative exhibitions, a steering group was formed by curators from city galleries, artists, the Scottish Arts Council and the Scottish media to set the Edinburgh Art Festival in motion.

To this end, an independent co-ordinator, Katie Nicoll, has been appointed to draw together the galleries mounting high quality exhibitions in Edinburgh over late July and August 2004 into a working Festival model. Focusing on the profile of the visual arts in the pilot year, Nicoll will write a study on how the festival will be developed to help shape the official launch of a full-scale Edinburgh Art Festival in 2005. She will evaluate the success of the inaugural programme, look at the interest currently being shown in Scotland by foreign curators and collectors and suggest a viable and stimulating format for the Festival in years to come.

Summer 2004 is very much a prelude to the official launch of the Festival in 2005. This year will be an opportunity to allow the co-ordinator and steering group time to draw on the excellent visual art resources and expertise in Edinburgh. Scotland’s indigenous artists are flourishing, new exhibiting venues and artists’ facilities are being reinvigorated and created and there is intense interest in what Scotland is doing from artists, curators and critics from abroad. It is planned that next year’s Art Festival will embrace these views and that the 2005 Festival will include an even wider selection of exhibitions and specially staged and curated events.

Support for The Edinburgh Art Festival has come from a number of sources, but in particular, from the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund and Scotland on Sunday.

EDINBURGH ART FESTIVAL

Summer 2004

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

For general information and enquiries about the Edinburgh Art Festival, please contact Katie Nicoll
Co-ordinator, Edinburgh Art Festival
Email: katie@fruitmarket.co.uk
Telephone: 0131 226 8189

For information about participating galleries and specific exhibitions, please contact the individual galleries. Details are given on the attached contact sheet.

Notes to editors

Contact email(s)

katie@fruitmarket.co.uk

Issued by: Edinburgh Art Festival